Sunday, March 29, 2009
I know that yesterday I posted a long post, but there are some stories that need to be told from the past couple of weeks starting with Bangkok...
On Rod's first day in town, we headed to the Gourmet Market in the nicest mall that Pat and I have ever been in. We were in search of limes, tonic water (no where to be found near our hotel) and pastries for the morning. We found what we needed and headed to the curb to hail a taxi. We were motioned to get in the taxi line, so we waited behind a couple of other people. We got into the first cab verifying they had a meter and asked to be taken to our hotel. He drove up a bit and said that he would not take us there. The traffic was bad, but there were plenty of taxis. We hopped out and tried another. Again after getting into the taxi and driving a little bit, we were told that the driver would not take us there. We were baffled by the drivers as you would expect them to drive you where you wanted to go as it is their job. Even if the traffic is bad or the hotel is across town, that means that they make more money, right? In another taxi attempt, the guy explained to us that the fare would be 20 baht, but that we needed to stop by a store first. Red Flags!! Absolutely not!! We had read about similar scams in the guidebooks, but had not yet experienced them so that was a first. After trying out several taxis and only making it a few feet at a time, we found a taker. The traffic was bad and it took quite a while, but we made it back to our hotel.
As a side note...Traffic in Bangkok is TERRIBLE!!! It can be 10am or 10pm and there is rush hour traffic! As you ride through the city in the taxi or walking on the streets, you wonder why anyone would be driving their personal car yet you see plenty of non-commercial vehicles. What are they thinking?!?! Pat recently read in a book that a family that lives in Bangkok now carries around a chemical toilet when they take family trips because they got caught in traffic for 17 hours and only moved something like 3 miles. So traffic is bad, but it also makes no sense. As we have likely mentioned before, in Thailand you can not turn across traffic. In Thailand you drive on the left side of the road, so that means that you cannot make a right turn (in most situations--at some intersections you can turn right). Instead of being able to make a right turn, you have to drive past where you want to go and make a U-turn and then turn left where you originally wanted to turn right. This is not too terrible in a place like Trang, only inconvenient. In Bangkok it means sitting terrible traffic then making a U-turn to sit in more traffic!! What were they thinking when they made the road rules!
So now we return to Laos and Luang Prabang. When we arrived on Monday, Pat and I went to go exchange a bit of Thai baht for some Laos kip. We exchanged about 4,000 baht each, which gave us just short of 1 million kip. Yes, that is right, we were almost millionaires in Laos!!! The exchange rate is around 8,000 kip to $1, but many of the restaurants, stores and hotels accept baht, kip and dollars. Supposedly, the kip has no value outside of Laos, so if you happened to have some kip left over after leaving the country, you would not be able to exchange it to anything. You would be stuck with some strange looking bills that all look strangely similar to each other. So do not take any kip outside of Laos, but if you want to be a millionaire, Laos is the place to be.
While we were staying with Rod at the riverside bungalows, we would take the hotel minivan into town inviting the driver and another staff member (who we will call Ta) to have a drink or a bit of food with us. The first night we learned that the driver, who was 30 years old at the most, had been married three times already and had "cancelled" the first two. Yes, he referred to the first two marriages as being cancelled, but his current wife is pregnant so I am thinking he is happy and not cancelling her. We also learned that Ta had just been married the previous week and was around 23 years old. The second night after a couple of beers we learned that Ta had another very beautiful woman in his life who did not know that he was married. He said that she had not been beautiful or nice, but that he saw her this year and that she was so beautiful (emphasis on so) and sometimes he cried. I am not sure if he cried about her being beautiful or...I'm not real sure, but he said sometimes he cried. We asked when he would tell this beautiful girl that he was married. He said something along the lines of "When she knows alone, she knows." So basically when she finds our on her own. The situation is not so comical, but the way that it was presented and explained was priceless.
On a different note, this morning I opted to wake up early to watch the alms ceremony when the monks accept food offerings at dawn. Rod had passed on this opportunity while he was in town and 6am is too early for Pat (as many of us know). I woke up this morning around 5:45am with my camera backpack strapped to my back, ready to conquer the streets. The left side of the street was lined with people giving offerings of mostly cooked rice and bananas. The other side of the street was lined with minibuses from different hotels. Vendors were selling rice and bananas to tourists to give to the monks, but I opted not to based on information passed on to me. Rod had told me that in the past monks had been given bad food by tourists and become sick. They had not wanted to continue the early morning tradition, but the government would hear none of that. The government said that the monks must continue for the tourists or that they would be replaced by actors. I had imagined sitting on the curb with my camera taking pictures of the "ceremony" inconspicuously, but tourists were lining the streets with point-and-shot cameras and video cameras blocking what view I may have had from the opposite curb. I took some pictures from a distance, but also knelt beside the curb (so as to be below the monks) to get some closer images. The whole ceremony was a bit bizarre. There were maybe 100 monks walking in a line collecting food from offerers. Instead of giving the monks a package of rice, each monk received a small fist full in their baskets. So in the end the monks received a pile of plain rice that each lump had been touched by a different strangers hand. None of the monks looked to excited about this prospect, but instead looked blankly as they completed a daily task. It was very interesting.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Living Like Rock Stars
Saturday, March 28, 2009
We successfully moved out of our apartment in Trang thanks to the help of our friends Hok and Joe. On Wednesday Joe and Hok spent the day with us taking us to lunch, helping us get rid of the stuff we no longer wanted and Hok picked us up in his pick up truck to take our suitcases and backpacks to the train station. Our night train to Bangkok was okay. We had a little compartment with a Russian couple which was quieter and more private than our previous train adventures. The air-con was extremely cold which is expected as someone running the trains does not understand moderation. Around 7:30am we were awaken by our Russian compartment-mates who informed us that the train was broken and that we had 5 minutes to switch trains. We scrambled to get our belongings together and we hopped on the neighboring train. Unfortunately our large luggage (2 suitcases and 2 hiking backpacks) was in the luggage car and did not make it on to the second train. We ended up riding the second train for 2.5hrs in the luggage car with a rooster, some motorbikes, lots of moving boxes and a few other people. When we arrived in Bangkok we were informed that our luggage would arrive in the afternoon. We took a taxi to our hotel (which took a while because our taxi driver got lost even after speaking with our hotel). We stayed at the Atlanta hotel, which is the oldest unchanged hotel in Bangkok. It is about 60 years old. The lobby was very interesting looking, but the rooms were very minimal. Walls throughout the hotel were plastered with rules which included no complaining ("not at these prices"), no sex tourist (which is fine, but at the same time does a sign in the front need to say in huge bold type "SEX TOURIST NOT WELCOME") and something like 10 more rules. These rules were in the lobby and posted on all the rest of the floors. Interesting...After trying to recover from the night train and early morning, we headed back to the train station to find our bags. We asked a couple of people who seemed a bit confused about the broken train, but we found one person who knew exactly what we were talking about and led us directly to our bags. We took our suitcases to storage where they will stay for 6 weeks and took our backpacks with us.
Rod, Pat's older brother, met us in Bangkok Friday. He had booked rooms for us at a lovely hotel, the Banyan Tree, where we had rooms with a view on the 45th floor. Rod, knowing what we had been missing, brought red wine, gin, sausage and cheese, and rosemary crackers for a little snack and drink before dinner on the rooftop restaurant. The view was incredible!! A 360 degree view of the lights of Bangkok!!! Dinner was good but it was wonderful to be with Rod and have such a priceless view of the city. We had no agenda for our time in Bangkok, so we checked out the weekend market, introduced Rod to some of our favorite dishes and Rod and Pat went to a Muay Thai fight. We were supposed to fly out on Sunday to head to Luang Prabang, Laos, but we had thought the flight was later than it was. We arrived at the airport 45 minutes before our flight left and the check-in counter would not let us through. We had a chance to actually make the flight, but as soon as the woman said "no" there was no hope. We tried to talking our way onto the plane, but after 15 minutes at the counter there was no chance. We changed our tickets to the same flight the following day and found a hotel online for one more night in Bangkok. We ended up staying in a 57th floor suite in the Lebua Hotel with a balcony overlooking the city and the river!!! I found that I really liked Bangkok from the 45th or 57th floor of a nice hotel.
After checking into the hotel we went exploring around the area. A man in a striped shirt approached us saying that he worked at the Embassy and was off for the day. He asked where we were going and we told him that we were looking for some food and wanted to head towards an area called Silom. He crossed the street with us and led us to a tuk-tuk. He had written "Silom" on a piece of paper for Pat in English and Thai. He told us we could take the tuk-tuk for 30baht. We told him that we preferred to walk, but he insisted that it was too far (3km). We continued to walk and he yelled "You do not believe me!" and tore up the piece of paper. He continued toyell at us as we walked off. It was a very bizarre situation.
From our 57th floor suite balcony, we drank red wine and gin and tonics watching the sunset and the lights illuminate the city. We had seen a Mexican restaurant earlier during our stay so we took a taxi to the restaurant. The driver was playing "If You Are Going to San Francisco." After we explained that Rod was from San Francisco, he turned up the volume and restarted the song. It was classic!! Pat has been craving Mexican food probably since we left the burrito restaurant in Chiang Mai in early January, so we enjoyed chips and salsa and burritos. The waitresses were wearing jeans and short denim shirts with cowboy hats.
On Monday we made our flight with no problems. The flight from Bangkok to Luang Prabang was only about 2 hours. We landed at a very small airport with only one other plane parked. We walked off the plane, across the "parking lot" and into the basically one-room airport. For the four nights that Rod was with us in Luang Prabang we stayed at a Bungalow beside the river outside of the actual town. Our bungalows had porches with great views of the river. There were one-speed bikes that we could ride into town and also the hotel's minivan could drive us into town.
Luang Prabang is a very quiet and quaint town. Laos is definitely a developing country based on roads and infrastructure, but Luang Prabang is not so. The streets are lined with boutique hotels, small guest houses and really cute shops selling local crafts especially silk woven products. All the bathrooms seem to have flushing toilets with toilet paper and soap (very surprising after our stay in Thailand), which is not usually the case in developing countries. There is a great art scene with art galleries and shops all around. The tourists seem to be either young backpackers or older tourists.
We spent most of our time walking around the town, peaking into different shops and trying different foods. One day we took a slow boat (let me emphasize slow) down the Mekong River to see the Buddha Caves (Pak Ou Caves). Local laotian people would take unused Buddhas to the caves, whether they were broken or had been replaced, and the caves were supposedly full of Buddha images. The caves were not as cool as the guidebooks had said. The boat ride was very nice, but also very slow.
Rod left on Friday to head back home and we moved on to a guest house in town. It was sad to say to see him go as we had had a wonderful time traveling and hanging out with him. We will stay in Luang Prabang until Monday when we fly back to Bangkok. Tuesday we will fly from Bangkok to Cambodia to go check out the temples in Siem Reap including Angkor Wat and work on getting our visas for Vietnam.
We successfully moved out of our apartment in Trang thanks to the help of our friends Hok and Joe. On Wednesday Joe and Hok spent the day with us taking us to lunch, helping us get rid of the stuff we no longer wanted and Hok picked us up in his pick up truck to take our suitcases and backpacks to the train station. Our night train to Bangkok was okay. We had a little compartment with a Russian couple which was quieter and more private than our previous train adventures. The air-con was extremely cold which is expected as someone running the trains does not understand moderation. Around 7:30am we were awaken by our Russian compartment-mates who informed us that the train was broken and that we had 5 minutes to switch trains. We scrambled to get our belongings together and we hopped on the neighboring train. Unfortunately our large luggage (2 suitcases and 2 hiking backpacks) was in the luggage car and did not make it on to the second train. We ended up riding the second train for 2.5hrs in the luggage car with a rooster, some motorbikes, lots of moving boxes and a few other people. When we arrived in Bangkok we were informed that our luggage would arrive in the afternoon. We took a taxi to our hotel (which took a while because our taxi driver got lost even after speaking with our hotel). We stayed at the Atlanta hotel, which is the oldest unchanged hotel in Bangkok. It is about 60 years old. The lobby was very interesting looking, but the rooms were very minimal. Walls throughout the hotel were plastered with rules which included no complaining ("not at these prices"), no sex tourist (which is fine, but at the same time does a sign in the front need to say in huge bold type "SEX TOURIST NOT WELCOME") and something like 10 more rules. These rules were in the lobby and posted on all the rest of the floors. Interesting...After trying to recover from the night train and early morning, we headed back to the train station to find our bags. We asked a couple of people who seemed a bit confused about the broken train, but we found one person who knew exactly what we were talking about and led us directly to our bags. We took our suitcases to storage where they will stay for 6 weeks and took our backpacks with us.
Rod, Pat's older brother, met us in Bangkok Friday. He had booked rooms for us at a lovely hotel, the Banyan Tree, where we had rooms with a view on the 45th floor. Rod, knowing what we had been missing, brought red wine, gin, sausage and cheese, and rosemary crackers for a little snack and drink before dinner on the rooftop restaurant. The view was incredible!! A 360 degree view of the lights of Bangkok!!! Dinner was good but it was wonderful to be with Rod and have such a priceless view of the city. We had no agenda for our time in Bangkok, so we checked out the weekend market, introduced Rod to some of our favorite dishes and Rod and Pat went to a Muay Thai fight. We were supposed to fly out on Sunday to head to Luang Prabang, Laos, but we had thought the flight was later than it was. We arrived at the airport 45 minutes before our flight left and the check-in counter would not let us through. We had a chance to actually make the flight, but as soon as the woman said "no" there was no hope. We tried to talking our way onto the plane, but after 15 minutes at the counter there was no chance. We changed our tickets to the same flight the following day and found a hotel online for one more night in Bangkok. We ended up staying in a 57th floor suite in the Lebua Hotel with a balcony overlooking the city and the river!!! I found that I really liked Bangkok from the 45th or 57th floor of a nice hotel.
After checking into the hotel we went exploring around the area. A man in a striped shirt approached us saying that he worked at the Embassy and was off for the day. He asked where we were going and we told him that we were looking for some food and wanted to head towards an area called Silom. He crossed the street with us and led us to a tuk-tuk. He had written "Silom" on a piece of paper for Pat in English and Thai. He told us we could take the tuk-tuk for 30baht. We told him that we preferred to walk, but he insisted that it was too far (3km). We continued to walk and he yelled "You do not believe me!" and tore up the piece of paper. He continued toyell at us as we walked off. It was a very bizarre situation.
From our 57th floor suite balcony, we drank red wine and gin and tonics watching the sunset and the lights illuminate the city. We had seen a Mexican restaurant earlier during our stay so we took a taxi to the restaurant. The driver was playing "If You Are Going to San Francisco." After we explained that Rod was from San Francisco, he turned up the volume and restarted the song. It was classic!! Pat has been craving Mexican food probably since we left the burrito restaurant in Chiang Mai in early January, so we enjoyed chips and salsa and burritos. The waitresses were wearing jeans and short denim shirts with cowboy hats.
On Monday we made our flight with no problems. The flight from Bangkok to Luang Prabang was only about 2 hours. We landed at a very small airport with only one other plane parked. We walked off the plane, across the "parking lot" and into the basically one-room airport. For the four nights that Rod was with us in Luang Prabang we stayed at a Bungalow beside the river outside of the actual town. Our bungalows had porches with great views of the river. There were one-speed bikes that we could ride into town and also the hotel's minivan could drive us into town.
Luang Prabang is a very quiet and quaint town. Laos is definitely a developing country based on roads and infrastructure, but Luang Prabang is not so. The streets are lined with boutique hotels, small guest houses and really cute shops selling local crafts especially silk woven products. All the bathrooms seem to have flushing toilets with toilet paper and soap (very surprising after our stay in Thailand), which is not usually the case in developing countries. There is a great art scene with art galleries and shops all around. The tourists seem to be either young backpackers or older tourists.
We spent most of our time walking around the town, peaking into different shops and trying different foods. One day we took a slow boat (let me emphasize slow) down the Mekong River to see the Buddha Caves (Pak Ou Caves). Local laotian people would take unused Buddhas to the caves, whether they were broken or had been replaced, and the caves were supposedly full of Buddha images. The caves were not as cool as the guidebooks had said. The boat ride was very nice, but also very slow.
Rod left on Friday to head back home and we moved on to a guest house in town. It was sad to say to see him go as we had had a wonderful time traveling and hanging out with him. We will stay in Luang Prabang until Monday when we fly back to Bangkok. Tuesday we will fly from Bangkok to Cambodia to go check out the temples in Siem Reap including Angkor Wat and work on getting our visas for Vietnam.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Moving Out and Moving On
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Life in Southern Thailand has become quite hectic now that we are finished teaching. Two weeks ago, after Pat turned in his final grades, we headed to our favorite island, Koh Lanta, for some relaxation and sun. From Wednesday until Monday, we spent plenty of time reading, enjoying the sun and sleeping. Our friend Niamh joined us for a couple of nights, and she was heavily pursued by two of the Thai hotel staff fighting for her attention and heart with tropical drinks decorated with heart-shaped pineapple pieces and conversations of broken English. She broke both of their hearts when she left with us Monday morning. One of her pursuers left a hand-written, hand-drawn note with Pat which we later passed on to Niamh. Monday morning was the Carolina v. Duke game. We intentionally stayed longer at the beach because a friend of ours on the staff allowed us to borrow the keys to the internet room to watch the game. We stayed up until 3:00am and watched the game on the glowing computer screen in the dark internet room, Pat pounding his fists in the air and jumping up with shouts. Luckily Carolina won and we were able to sleep well at 5:30am. Go HEELS!!
We spent a couple of days in Trang packing our suitcases in preparation of our move March 18th, hanging out with friends and eating at our favorite restaurants. Last Wednesday we took the 5 hour bus to Phuket in order to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. We arrived in Phuket Town after dark and found a guesthouse within walking distance of the bus station that had everything we needed: air conditioning, hot water, cable TV (with English chanels) and an inexpensive price (around $15). Thursday morning we caught a shuttle to the airport and flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet one of Pat's high school friends for a long weekend. We were on a budget so we decided to take the bus from the airport to our hotel in the city, which ended up taking 2 hours!! Towards the end of the ride when everyone else on the bus had been dropped off, Pat's boredom got the best of him and he spent the rest of the ride messing with me as I tried to read.
Our hotel was in an area known as Chow Kit (known for its market), which ended up not being touristy at all. We saw maybe one other tourist in the area the whole time, which is kind of nice. The hotel was okay, but we ended up moving to the hotel nextdoor, which was much nicer and only a few dollars more a night (and we could see the Petronas Towers from our window and they were filming a movie in the lobby and on our floor). Our first night in KL we tried walking the 5km to the Petronas Towers (the tallest towers in the world until 2004), but ended up at a dead end at an elevated highway. We took the subway the remaining distance and found ourselves in a massive and nice shopping mall that is between the towers (where we spent a lot of our long weekend.) On Friday we slept late and ate lunch at a Curry House near our hotel and enjoyed the Indian influence on Malay food. There are a couple of main influences of Malaysian culture. There are Indian Malays, Chinese Malays and Malaysia Malays. So we found that the food includes a lot of Indian and Chinese foods. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim (we could hear the call to prayer from our hotel) and it was a British colony, so a lot of people speak extremely good English.
On Friday we went back to the shopping mall to watch "Watchmen," which Pat had been anticipating since it came out on March 8th. We explored China Town, which resembled the knock-off markets that we have found in Thailand with pushy vendors and lots of bootleg DVDs and fake Channel handbags. We tried to find Little India, but we headed back at the Curry House for a dinner of fresh naan and curried chicken. Saturday morning we switched hotels and waited for Pat's friend, Becca, to arrive from the airport. After catching up over lunch at the Curry House, the three of us headed to the Lake Gardens and then to the Kuala Lumpur Tower to look over the city from the observation deck. We spent time in the shopping mall at the Petronas Towers chatting over coffee at Starbucks. We avoided the afternoon rain in our hotel and then watched the Liverpool soccer game at a bar in China Town. On Sunday we woke up to Pat's computer not working so we spent the morning trying to fix it and then we took a taxi to Little India for an amazing lunch. Little India was a bit disappointing as all of the shops were selling tacky silk fabrics, headscarves and carpets, but our lunch was well worth the trip. Becca had to catch her plane Sunday evening and our flight was not until Monday morning. Pat and I enjoyed a trip up to the Sky Bridge on the 40th floor of the Petronas Towers as the sun started to set. We had a good weekend and enjoyed seeing and hanging out with Becca, but there is not a whole lot to do in KL.
Lessons learned from Kuala Lumpur:
-Always insist on taxi drivers using the meter. All the taxis have meters in Kuala Lumpur, but for some reason a majority refuse to use it. Often you tell the driver where you want to go and they name a price between 10 and 20 ringit. If you want you can try to bargain the price. On one ride we bargained for 10 ringit to go from the Kuala Lumpur Tower to the Petronas Towers. The driver had left the meter on and when we arrived at the Petronas Towers we saw that it should have cost no more than 2 ringit. From that point on we asked all the drivers if they had a meter. Most of the time they said they did not have a meter even though one was clearly in sight or they said it did not work. A couple of times we would ask nearly 10 drivers before we found one willing to use his meter.
-Do not take the blue taxis (especially if you are on a budget). On a very rainy afternoon we found a driver willing to use his meter to take us from the Petronas Towers to our hotel (about 5 km). As soon as we got in the driver informed us that his meter started at 6 ringit. We had already asked several drivers about using their meter and it was raining a lot, so we stayed in the taxi. As we drove through the rain and traffic, the price on the meter quickly rose much faster than most taxis. We learned that our taxi was a blue taxi which is an "executive" taxi and therefore cost more and went at a quicker rate. The ride was very pricey and the driver took us to the wrong hotel.
-Make sure your alarm is set to the local time. Our flight was at 7:10 on Monday morning, so we set our alarm for 4:30am and had the hotel call a taxi for us for 5am. Early in the morning our phone rang and the voice informed me that our taxi was waiting. I tried to explain that it was 4:20am and that we did not need a taxi until 5am. The voice corrected me said that it was already 5:20am. Our cell phone was still on Thailand time and we had oversleeped!! We rushed to pack our bags and were in the taxi by 5:35am. The ride ended up taking a full hour even though there was absolutely no traffic. The airport was surprisingly busy! We begged to have our bags checked and we fidgeted in the line for passport control before asking to get in front of eveyone since our flight was leaving in 20 minutes. We ran to the gate and pleaded to be let on the flight only to find that the flight to Phuket had not boarded. We caught our flight and our bags made it to Phuket and by 1pm on Monday we were back in Trang.
Yesterday and today, Pat and I have been trying to pack, clean and get everything ready to move out tomorrow. We head to Bangkok by train tomorrow evening where we will meet Rod, Pat's older brother. This morning we sold our washing machine (which we used only twice) and our fridge for quite a deal for the buyers (because we were getting a little desperate). In the afternoon we sold our motorbike back to the dealership for less than they had promised. We are slowly packing everything up and cleaning out our apartment. It is surprising that we have already spent close to 5 months in Thailand. We are excited about traveling in Southeast Asia, but at the same time we are a bit sad to leave Trang and our friends here. It is very strange to be packing our bags.
Life in Southern Thailand has become quite hectic now that we are finished teaching. Two weeks ago, after Pat turned in his final grades, we headed to our favorite island, Koh Lanta, for some relaxation and sun. From Wednesday until Monday, we spent plenty of time reading, enjoying the sun and sleeping. Our friend Niamh joined us for a couple of nights, and she was heavily pursued by two of the Thai hotel staff fighting for her attention and heart with tropical drinks decorated with heart-shaped pineapple pieces and conversations of broken English. She broke both of their hearts when she left with us Monday morning. One of her pursuers left a hand-written, hand-drawn note with Pat which we later passed on to Niamh. Monday morning was the Carolina v. Duke game. We intentionally stayed longer at the beach because a friend of ours on the staff allowed us to borrow the keys to the internet room to watch the game. We stayed up until 3:00am and watched the game on the glowing computer screen in the dark internet room, Pat pounding his fists in the air and jumping up with shouts. Luckily Carolina won and we were able to sleep well at 5:30am. Go HEELS!!
We spent a couple of days in Trang packing our suitcases in preparation of our move March 18th, hanging out with friends and eating at our favorite restaurants. Last Wednesday we took the 5 hour bus to Phuket in order to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. We arrived in Phuket Town after dark and found a guesthouse within walking distance of the bus station that had everything we needed: air conditioning, hot water, cable TV (with English chanels) and an inexpensive price (around $15). Thursday morning we caught a shuttle to the airport and flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet one of Pat's high school friends for a long weekend. We were on a budget so we decided to take the bus from the airport to our hotel in the city, which ended up taking 2 hours!! Towards the end of the ride when everyone else on the bus had been dropped off, Pat's boredom got the best of him and he spent the rest of the ride messing with me as I tried to read.
Our hotel was in an area known as Chow Kit (known for its market), which ended up not being touristy at all. We saw maybe one other tourist in the area the whole time, which is kind of nice. The hotel was okay, but we ended up moving to the hotel nextdoor, which was much nicer and only a few dollars more a night (and we could see the Petronas Towers from our window and they were filming a movie in the lobby and on our floor). Our first night in KL we tried walking the 5km to the Petronas Towers (the tallest towers in the world until 2004), but ended up at a dead end at an elevated highway. We took the subway the remaining distance and found ourselves in a massive and nice shopping mall that is between the towers (where we spent a lot of our long weekend.) On Friday we slept late and ate lunch at a Curry House near our hotel and enjoyed the Indian influence on Malay food. There are a couple of main influences of Malaysian culture. There are Indian Malays, Chinese Malays and Malaysia Malays. So we found that the food includes a lot of Indian and Chinese foods. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim (we could hear the call to prayer from our hotel) and it was a British colony, so a lot of people speak extremely good English.
On Friday we went back to the shopping mall to watch "Watchmen," which Pat had been anticipating since it came out on March 8th. We explored China Town, which resembled the knock-off markets that we have found in Thailand with pushy vendors and lots of bootleg DVDs and fake Channel handbags. We tried to find Little India, but we headed back at the Curry House for a dinner of fresh naan and curried chicken. Saturday morning we switched hotels and waited for Pat's friend, Becca, to arrive from the airport. After catching up over lunch at the Curry House, the three of us headed to the Lake Gardens and then to the Kuala Lumpur Tower to look over the city from the observation deck. We spent time in the shopping mall at the Petronas Towers chatting over coffee at Starbucks. We avoided the afternoon rain in our hotel and then watched the Liverpool soccer game at a bar in China Town. On Sunday we woke up to Pat's computer not working so we spent the morning trying to fix it and then we took a taxi to Little India for an amazing lunch. Little India was a bit disappointing as all of the shops were selling tacky silk fabrics, headscarves and carpets, but our lunch was well worth the trip. Becca had to catch her plane Sunday evening and our flight was not until Monday morning. Pat and I enjoyed a trip up to the Sky Bridge on the 40th floor of the Petronas Towers as the sun started to set. We had a good weekend and enjoyed seeing and hanging out with Becca, but there is not a whole lot to do in KL.
Lessons learned from Kuala Lumpur:
-Always insist on taxi drivers using the meter. All the taxis have meters in Kuala Lumpur, but for some reason a majority refuse to use it. Often you tell the driver where you want to go and they name a price between 10 and 20 ringit. If you want you can try to bargain the price. On one ride we bargained for 10 ringit to go from the Kuala Lumpur Tower to the Petronas Towers. The driver had left the meter on and when we arrived at the Petronas Towers we saw that it should have cost no more than 2 ringit. From that point on we asked all the drivers if they had a meter. Most of the time they said they did not have a meter even though one was clearly in sight or they said it did not work. A couple of times we would ask nearly 10 drivers before we found one willing to use his meter.
-Do not take the blue taxis (especially if you are on a budget). On a very rainy afternoon we found a driver willing to use his meter to take us from the Petronas Towers to our hotel (about 5 km). As soon as we got in the driver informed us that his meter started at 6 ringit. We had already asked several drivers about using their meter and it was raining a lot, so we stayed in the taxi. As we drove through the rain and traffic, the price on the meter quickly rose much faster than most taxis. We learned that our taxi was a blue taxi which is an "executive" taxi and therefore cost more and went at a quicker rate. The ride was very pricey and the driver took us to the wrong hotel.
-Make sure your alarm is set to the local time. Our flight was at 7:10 on Monday morning, so we set our alarm for 4:30am and had the hotel call a taxi for us for 5am. Early in the morning our phone rang and the voice informed me that our taxi was waiting. I tried to explain that it was 4:20am and that we did not need a taxi until 5am. The voice corrected me said that it was already 5:20am. Our cell phone was still on Thailand time and we had oversleeped!! We rushed to pack our bags and were in the taxi by 5:35am. The ride ended up taking a full hour even though there was absolutely no traffic. The airport was surprisingly busy! We begged to have our bags checked and we fidgeted in the line for passport control before asking to get in front of eveyone since our flight was leaving in 20 minutes. We ran to the gate and pleaded to be let on the flight only to find that the flight to Phuket had not boarded. We caught our flight and our bags made it to Phuket and by 1pm on Monday we were back in Trang.
Yesterday and today, Pat and I have been trying to pack, clean and get everything ready to move out tomorrow. We head to Bangkok by train tomorrow evening where we will meet Rod, Pat's older brother. This morning we sold our washing machine (which we used only twice) and our fridge for quite a deal for the buyers (because we were getting a little desperate). In the afternoon we sold our motorbike back to the dealership for less than they had promised. We are slowly packing everything up and cleaning out our apartment. It is surprising that we have already spent close to 5 months in Thailand. We are excited about traveling in Southeast Asia, but at the same time we are a bit sad to leave Trang and our friends here. It is very strange to be packing our bags.
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